The Quick Adios (Times Six) (32 page)

“In for what, this Bobby Fuck No?” I said.

“Multiple motor vehicle theft, and he made the most of it. His incarceration was his free ticket to the equivalent of a master’s degree. He now owns a small chain of Canadian auto parts stores, and they specialize in repairing alternators, generators and small engines. His employees are all ex-cons and parolees.”

“Skills they learned while basking in the Mimico glow,” I said.

“Fonteneau now works with a private prison outfit to teach skills inside and he employs only parolees outside. He coordinates with a group of halfway houses and rehab operations. Canadian magazines and newspapers write praise-filled articles about him. He ships a lot of alternators into the States.”

“Where did Wiley go, inside an Ontario Provincial Toshiba?”

“No,” said Beth, “he found the jail records and he gave me some background on Caldwell’s business activities—info he discussed with you three days ago. I found more this afternoon while the doctors assessed your condition. I think Fecko already told you that twenty-five years ago Caldwell and two partners formed a company in Ottawa called Currie Forms. The firm owned plastic manufacturing plants in Canada and in the States. Twelve years ago Caldwell bought out his partners and quickly sold Currie to a huge company called Branchdale. He made a fortune. The partners didn’t see the sell-out coming, and both sued Caldwell. One case was settled out of court. The other partner committed suicide, and that case eventually was dropped.”

“Convenient,” I said.

“Yes. That partner’s name was Richard Fonteneau.”

“Richard? His brother?”

“No, he was Fuck No’s father.”

“We should invent a game called Information Whiplash.”

“Follow it up with a game called Cold Revenge.”

“If that’s his game, he’s got huge balls to show up in town to close out Caldwell’s affairs,” I said. “Especially since Mrs. Caldwell is here in town, talking with the same lawyer who took Fonteneau to breakfast on Thursday.”

“Name?”

“E. Carlton Gamble, the man we spoke about this afternoon.”

“I can’t wait to speak with him,” said Beth. “I also can’t wait to speak with Mr. Fuck No.”

“On another subject,” I said, “my brother called this morning with an opinion.”

“Two bits says he believes Darrin Marsh killed Teresa Barga.”

“He strongly suggested it,” I said. “He thinks that she was more than capable of giving him reasons to be jealous.”

“An argument for which you had no argument?”

“Correct. You said there were two 911 calls, right?”

“Yes,” said Beth. “The first was a hang-up and the second was from Marsh.”

“From Caldwell’s landline?”

Beth nodded. “Both calls came from Caldwell’s phone.”

“And he reported only two bodies?”

“I’d have to double-check, but I think that’s right. He hadn’t seen Pulver yet.”

“But he saw Greg’s body at some point. He told me… Today’s Saturday, right? He told me that yesterday afternoon.”

“That stands to reason,” she said. “He may have looked around after he placed the call.”

“I don’t buy it,” I said. “Walk through it in your mind. He’s just come across the body of his neighbor slumped on the floor, then found Teresa dead in the kitchen. He knew for sure that she’d been killed within the past however many minutes. Let’s say thirty minutes. And it’s his day off. He probably wasn’t walking around the condo’s interior hallway with a weapon on him. Any cop worth a shit would have gone back to his own condo, called 911 from there, returned to Caldwell’s with a weapon, and made sure the murderer wasn’t still around. At that point he might have found Pulver. Then he would have backed out of the place and waited for the responders. Above all, he would have armed himself as quickly as possible.”

“I have no problem with your reasoning,” said Beth, “except you’re assuming that Marsh, as a cop, is worth a shit.”

“I have no knowledge of that,” I said, “but I think he’s a bad murderer.”

“Because he killed Teresa in a condo with two other bodies?”

“We made a point of not discussing Marsh twenty-four hours ago,” I said, “so let me preface my string of logic with something he told me yesterday. At some point in the past few months, Marsh sneaked into Teresa’s belongings and read her diaries. He found proof that she’d had a fling with some tourist, but he didn’t confront her about it because he was afraid she’d go ballistic about his snooping. He said he was afraid of losing her, and I believed him. Now I think it was all a half-truth. I think he wanted to go ballistic but was too ashamed to admit that he was a sneak. I think he was looking for another way to prove her infidelity, and he happened to discover that Teresa and Greg were a secret item. I think he killed Greg Pulver first. I think Teresa discovered Greg’s body and accused Marsh, threatened to expose his crime, so he had to kill her too. I have no idea how Emerson Caldwell fits into any of it.”

Beth didn’t respond immediately, but after a minute of thought said, “I have to think like a cop and combine theories with facts and proof. You’ve just given me a first-rate scenario.”

“Without a speck of proof, I know,” I said. “How about a little more depth that may lead you to proof?”

“Please.”

“Pulver had been dead two days. With this check-cashing scheme going down, if Ocilla or Emerson learned that Pulver was reporting back to the Sheriff’s Office, they might have killed him or found someone else to do it. But not in Caldwell’s condo. A dead man would draw police attention, exactly what they didn’t want. Even if one of them had killed Pulver in the condo, none of them would want his body found there. They would have figured a way to get him out of there.”

“Okay,” said Beth. “I feel a punch line coming.”

“Darrin Marsh is the only one on your radar who wouldn’t care if a murder victim was found in Emerson Caldwell’s condominium.”

“That’s a strong point, Alex. I wish I could take credit for it. The only problem I have with that takes us back to Fonteneau. If he was coming south from Canada the evening you returned from Sarasota, he couldn’t have killed Pulver two days earlier. But what if he arranged for someone to kill the guy so we could blame the murder on Caldwell? That would be a nasty damn revenge, wouldn’t it?”

“Except that Fonteneau would gain nothing financially. A perfect revenge would be to clean out Caldwell’s life savings, not send him to prison.”

I said, “Maybe he hired Pulver to rip off Caldwell, then… Hell, this is getting far too complicated.”

Beth reached to the armrest behind her, raised a plastic bottle, unscrewed its cap and chugged down half the water. “I came up with an idea while Max related his version of the background story,” she said. “I checked the Caldwell condo security keypad for the day the bodies were found and each of the three days before that. But you told me that Marsh had been an electrician, and I didn’t check how many times the system went down. How did you learn that about him?”

“Carmen told me.”

“Right,” she said. “Are you thinking that he could have disabled the system or just Caldwell’s keypad?”

“The company that monitors the system would know.”

“And they wouldn’t tell anyone,” she said. “It would be bad for business if their customers found out.”

“You just solved a murder case.”

“Maybe so, and thank you,” said Beth. “Who was that weasel who spoke to you in the hospital lobby?”

“His name is Edwin Torres,” I said. “He’s a mechanic who works for Beeson, the man that hired me in Sarasota. He wanted to warn me that Beeson was trying to set me up for something.”

“Is he a flake?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so until today. As of now he’s either correct or crazy.”

Our approach into Key West International was quick and deliberate. The runway lights came on when our pilot clicked his radio mike five times. Simple automation. He explained while we taxied to his tie-down that the tower had been closed for forty minutes.

I asked if that meant that the airport was empty except for us.

“No,” he said, “the security in that terminal would make the Secret Service proud. Someone knows we’re here because I called ahead, but they still would know, even if I hadn’t.”

We descended the ladder to a chill breeze, the wind direction and scent promising cooler weather for the next couple of days. After Sam’s friend locked the Cessna, we hiked three hundred yards to the flight service center where he had parked. Rather than waiting and paying for a taxi, we had accepted his offer of a ride.

“Someone knows we’re walking out here, too?” I said. “Are we being observed though night-vision goggles?”

“I can’t imagine so,” said the pilot. “I doubt if they’re up in the tower, but you never know. When the answers don’t concern me, I don’t ask the questions.”

I said, “How can you…”

Beth elbowed my arm, a shut-up signal.

Sure as hell, we drove past The Tideline on our way into town but my memory spared me another replay of time spent with “the late” Teresa Barga. Perhaps the throng of ideas in my head had crowded out my grief and nostalgia.

Or postponed it all until a murderer was found.

O
n Sunday morning Beth and I rose early at her house on Passover Lane and walked around the cemetery to Sandy’s Cafe on White Street. It was cool, bright and not too breezy—the sort of day that paid back locals for the past year’s nor’westers, tropical waves and hurricane watches. A day that was sure to piss off every tourist whose vacation was ending, who had to head back north that afternoon. We ordered two cafés con leche, split a ham and cheese breakfast wrap, then sat on red vinyl-padded stools on the sidewalk and watched joggers, bike riders, dog walkers and traffic.

I had left my phone back in her kitchen. Beth brought hers in case Max Saunders called with news on Ocilla Ramirez’s location. Just when we had reached the point of flipping a coin for the last bite of food, Beth’s phone rang. It was Marnie giving us a one-hour warning of a mandatory brunch of colby lasagna and pinot noir.

“Perfect,” said Beth. “We’ll be starved.”

Back in Beth’s kitchen my phone was rattling on the countertop. A text message awaited me—from Wiley.

R U Dead? Just saw on internet you survived crash. Where R U?

I also had missed a phone call from Justin Beeson. I decided that returning to his world would spoil a good mood. For that matter, Wiley knew I wasn’t dead. I didn’t feel like confronting humanity’s problems. I pocketed the cell, and Beth and I walked to our fashionable lunch. The whole town had come outside, and the sun, right there in January, made me wish I had worn SPF 30.

Marnie Dunwoody and Sam Wheeler’s home on the south end of Elizabeth Street smelled like a fine Italian restaurant. I heard Jesse Winchester on the stereo, noticed that Marnie was drinking a tall iced coffee. She handed us half-full wine glasses and sent Sam and Beth to the back porch to roast veggies on the grill. She waved me into the kitchen to chat while she toasted English muffins.

“See the paper this morning?”

“No offense, since it’s your employer,” I said, “but I’ve succeeded in avoiding it since I woke up.”

“E. Carlton Gamble issued a press release on behalf of the estate of Emerson R. Caldwell,” said Marnie. “We agreed to print it as a letter to the editor. It calls into question the offensive actions of the FDLE, the Sheriff’s Office and the city police in ordering an autopsy for a gentleman with a history of age-related health issues. It was heartbreaking for the family and a financial burden because they had to postpone a funeral and burial in Toronto. While the family conceded that Mr. Caldwell’s fatal heart attack took place at a tragic crime scene, the autopsy was a waste of taxpayer money.”

“Excellent,” I said. “He perfectly ignored the fact that the Canadian consulate asked for the autopsy. Now I will turn off my brain again.”

“You’ve had a bitch of a week,” she said.

“It’s weird to think that twenty-four hours ago I swam out of a plane wreck.”

“Sam said that Sherwin has two broken ankles. That ought to slow him down a notch.”

“You know Rodney, my ace pilot?”

“Not until the night before you flew with him,” said Marnie. “He was on the verge of rockin’ the night away at Captain Tony’s. I was there around six, having a beer with Rob O’Neal while Rob pissed and moaned about not being able to join in my multiple-murder scoop.”

“Why was that?”

“When that call came on Monday morning, the boss had already sent him to Boca Chica to shoot a change-of-command ceremony. That’s why I needed you. Anyway, the night before last, your pilot was right next to us at the bar when he got the call. He repeated your name as he wrote himself a note, then hung up and complained about having to stop his happy hour so he could fly in the morning. The guy drinking with him checked out the note and read your name aloud, said he knew you. He thought you were a fine person, and the island needed more like you.”

“Who is my new best friend?” I said.

“His name was Fontaine.” She knocked her knuckles on her forehead, tapped her memory. “Robert Fontaine.”

“Please say it wasn’t Fonteneau,” I said.

“Right, that’s it. You gave him the names of three great local lawyers because he’s here to close out some real estate matters.”

“Fonteneau and I shared a taxi from the airport on Tuesday night. He said that he’d come to town to settle the estate of a colleague who had died of a heart attack, a Canadian businessman.”

“Oh, shit,” said Marnie. “Emerson Caldwell?”

“I assumed that, but I didn’t ask,” I said. “I didn’t give him names of attorneys, either. I told him to find one who’d been in town a while… Son of a bitch. He knew at least twelve hours ahead of time that I was going to fly on that plane. Did you tell him that you knew me?”

“I did not offer that information.”

“How could he have known that I knew diddley about Caldwell?”

Marnie pointed toward the back porch. “Your connection to the investigating detective?”

“Okay, it’s possible. What would he gain by killing me?”